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Bonnie Ayodele, a professor of Political Science, Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Kwara State, speaks with IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI on the various controversies that have trailed the conduct of the last Presidential and National Assembly election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), explaining areas the commission can tidy up as it prepares for the next election.
As Nigerians wait with bated breath for the governorship and state assembly election that will be held across the country on Saturday, following the postponement of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to afford more time to reconfigure the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), what effect do you think the week-long postponement will have, especially, on the various gubernatorial and state assembly candidates?
I will suggest that we should not first of all discuss the effects the postponement will deliver for the candidates, but for INEC itself. Following the contest that arose after the last election, it becomes highly imperative that the electoral commission must redeem its image from the way it has been soiled, even though I believe that the commission has been unjustly accused and labelled as a bad umpire.
How has it been unjustly labelled…?
The reason is not far to seek, because from an objective point of view, INEC followed the Electoral Act. In fact, I have never seen anywhere or ways by which the commission flouted the electoral laws. It is very sad that a lot of politicians do not really understand the difference between transmission and uploading. I stand to be corrected, but there is nowhere where it is stated in the Electoral Act where the concept of uploading is a law. If you write a letter to me through a third-party, it is still being transmitted even if you don’t send it directly to my phone through mobile communication. As much as I believe that the election has one or two shortcomings, I still believe that the majority of us have not been fair to INEC. The fact is that there is nowhere in the world that an election is conducted without any glitch. It even happens in the elections conducted by the super power-holding countries of the world. But should they now decide to throw away the baby with the bath water? They can’t obviously do that. I simply believe that some of these politicians are just bad losers that intend to cast aspersions on an electoral body that actually got some of their parties’ candidates elected, just because they could not win the presidential election. I want to say that I do not know anyone in Nigeria whose permutations did not fit into the modules of the outcome of the last election.
Before the election, I had personally said it would be difficult for the All Progressives Congress (APC) to win Lagos State, even though the state has been its stronghold for years now. I told all my friends, because it was very obvious in the build-up to the election as the obidients movement had its firm hold in Lagos down to some states in the South-East. And if you look at the patterns of the election, it was driven by two sentiments: ethnicity and religion, which are the two biggest fault lines in Nigeria. That was what spurred on the obidients’ movement, such that everyone saw it as an issue. But I strongly believe that the movement will soon fizzle away. Nobody has seen or said this, but as a political scientist, I can boldly tell you this. Mark my word, in the next four years, the movement will not even exist, as the drive for power to shift to the Northern part of the country will become an issue. APC would probably want the power to go to the North, while the PDP will still retain its presidency in the region. So where does the obidients’ movement fit in amidst this?
Now, speaking on the week-long postponement of the next election, though I personally see no effect this may have, in politics, it is often said that 24 hours is a long time and anything can happen. So in view of this, I can say the brief break will have certain effects. But above all, I will like the electoral commission to gather its acts together this time. Already, the court has granted its request to reconfigure BVAS, which I believe they would have commenced by now. But I will expect the politicians and political parties to abide by the rules themselves. I know one week break will not necessarily change anything for them because the die is cast. And the person that is going to win will still do so at the end of the day even despite the shifting of the election, because already the people have made up their mind on who they want to vote for. So, for me, there won’t be any significant change.
In your argument, you raised a critical issue which borders on transmission and uploading of results. Before the election, everyone had been expecting a situation whereby the election results would be transmitted right from the polling unit to the INEC server, such that anyone in any part of the country could visibly assess it. But barely 24 hours to the commencement of the poll, INEC came out and said that would not be possible, citing certain hacking tendencies. Do you think it is appropriate for the commission to ditch this electronic transmission of results at the last minute, which many people believed would have made the election free, fair and credible?
So, are you telling me now that the non-uploading of the election results to the INEC server has invalidated the results that were derived at the instances of all the parties’ agents at the polling booths, down to the local government level and to the state collation centres, and from there to the national collation centre? The votes were counted at the instances of the parties’ agents across all the states. I believe in any state where the results declared in Abuja do not tally with what the agents of the political parties had at their various units, the parties should cry out and raise objections with clear evidence from their agents.
And on the fact that INEC ditched the electronic transmission for the manual, we shouldn’t forget the fact that we are dealing with machines, which can develop faults at any time. Even if INEC said they were going to upload and a glitch arose in any case, does that mean that the world must stop moving? Does it mean that we shouldn’t move on and the election must be cancelled? Or in what way has the non-uploading of results invalidated the whole election? This has been the arguments of everybody, including those that won in Lagos and in about 10 other states. What if they were the one declared the winner by INEC, will they have probably been calling for a cancellation of the entire process? The Labour Party (LP) won in Lagos, where no party has ever beaten the APC in the last couple of years. But they accepted the results of Lagos, even though it was not uploaded on the INEC server like others. Same thing for Anambra, the LP won with over one million votes.
The results were also not uploaded on the INEC server. How come it was not protested? Yet, they said INEC rigged the poll. Can you say that such a claim is correct in the light of how the election results panned out? If the opposition parties so believed that they were rigged out, let their various agents at the wards to state level come out with the results they obtained at the poll and let’s see how different it will be with what INEC has announced. Even the commission has said this. Again, so that you will know that religious sentiments really played a key factor in the election, the majority of the states where LP won, it was the Christian community that voted for him. He was able to win Lagos, because some Christians in the state voted against Tinubu. Even Kaduna and Nasarawa where Obi also pulled huge votes, the states have a lot of Christians. Okay, look at Rivers State, who doesn’t know that it will be either APC or LP that will win the state in view of the state governor’s past public utterances and body language. The governor had even recruited over 3000 agents before the election.
What are the areas you want the electoral commission to improve on ahead of the next election?
I want INEC to take us to that height where we can be voting electronically. Let them configure our national identities into the electoral process. And for the coming Saturday election, the commission must look for ways to prevent what generated a crisis in the last election, which includes the deployment of BVAS. And if the commission wants to upload results this time, they must perfect their strategies and machines. And both the server and the network must be very good and work seamlessly, such that they will be able to absorb all the inputting processes. And then, the commission should add a little bit of discipline to their personnel. I want to believe that the current cash crunch has downplayed the issue of vote-buying during the election. So we can see this as a plus, even though in other areas, it is bringing pain to the people.
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